Excerpt from Journal of the Senate of the State of New-York, at Their Sixty-Ninth Session: Begun and Held at the Capitol, in the City of Albany, on the Sixth Day of January, 1846

A still further complaint made by the tenants is that an inequality of taxation exists in favor of the landlords of these leasehold estates, unjust to the people of the whole State, in reference to the collection of a general tax, and particularly unjust to the people of the counties where the estates are situate, in reference to the taxes annually asses sed to pay town and county expenses. The ground assumed, if I understand it, is that the rents are, in effect the interest upon a capi tal invested by the landlord and secured upon the land, which capital is as proper an object of taxation as money secured by bond and mortgage, or by contract for the sale of lands. In other words, it is assumed that conveyin lands by durable leases, is a mode of sale, in effect, b which the se ler, instead of stipulating that the purchase money sha lbe paid within a specified time, requires that it shell for ever remain invested in, and secured upon the land, and that the interest upon that purchase money shall be annually paid to him as rent. If the same terms of sale were carried into effect by a deed from the seller, and a mortgage from the purchaser, the law would tax the capital secured by the mortgage in the hands of the seller, while the land would be taxed as the property of the purchaser. In these cases, the law taxes the lands to the tenants who occupy them and still it is said the capital secured to the landlord by the lease, and which produces to him his interest, under the name of rent, as the mortgage secures to the seller the capital which produces his income, under the name of interest, is not reached by the law, and is not taxed at all, although there is no difference in principle, public policy, or substantial justice, between the two cases.

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